This invention relates to an inductive device, comprising a coil former made of an electrically insulating material, and at least one winding of an electrically conductive wire arranged on the coil former, said coil former being provided with connection members which are made of an electrically conductive material and each of which comprises a fixing portion which is anchored in the coil former, a comparatively rigid attachment pin to which one end of the wire is attached, and a comparatively flexible contact pin which projects from the coil former.
A device of this kind is known from DE-A-40 15 564. The connection member of the known device is formed by bending a piece of wire. Because of the comparatively complex shape of the connection member, this is an intricate and hence expensive operation. The fixing portion of the known connection member is situated between the attachment pin and the contact pin, so that in order to secure the connection member in the coil former it is necessary to arrange the fixing portion in a trough recessed in the coil former. Subsequently, the walls of the trough must be distorted by means of a suitable tool so that the fixing portion is locked in the trough. This is also a time-consuming and expensive operation. A third drawback of the known device consists in that the properties of the wire constituting the connection member represent a compromise between the contradictory requirements imposed in respect of the contact pin and the attachment pin. This is because the attachment pin must be comparatively rigid in order to enable the winding wire to be wrapped around this pin without the pin being deformed, whereas the contact pin must be flexible. The latter is necessary because the device will be secured, generally speaking, in a printed circuit board (PCB), the contact pin being soldered into the board. In the event of temperature fluctuations, the PCB will expand and shrink, so that this soldered joint is loaded. If the contact pin is flexible, it can follow these motions so that the soldered joint is loaded substantially less. The wire constituting the connection member evidently has the same thickness over its entire length, so that the flexibility of the contact pin must be achieved by bending the contact pin in a meander-like fashion. Because of this compromise, in many cases the contact pin will be more rigid and the connection pin will be more flexible than desired to achieve an optimum result.